


Crash Course

by SheWhoWalksUnseen



Series: Desperate For Changing, Starving For Truth [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/F, Gen, Mentions of Background Characters, Pre-Relationship Lisa/Shawna, The Rogues as Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:43:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16067168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWhoWalksUnseen/pseuds/SheWhoWalksUnseen
Summary: Apparently, deciding to wait for Lisa in her new lab minutes after the Particle Accelerator went off hadn’t been his smartest plan.Waking up half-naked on a hospital bed in S.T.A.R. Labs and startling the hell out of the doctor on her tablet next to him were certainly not part of the plan.





	Crash Course

**Author's Note:**

> ...Remember when I said I was going to possibly write more for this Role Reversal au?
> 
> I'm nowhere near done with this series. Part of this was originally what I had written for the Coldflash Exchange before I realized rewriting all of S1 was a dumbass decision, and the next part of this may or may not be another prequel to Speed Bump. Maybe.
> 
> Thank you to the lovely Thette for beta-ing! :) Enjoy.

Leonard Snart hadn’t been planning on becoming a superhero. After years of stealing and lying his way through life, he had been set on staying a criminal.

Not because of Lewis’ ideas about “discipline”, but because it had been easy. It was much simpler to pick someone’s pocket than try and go straight after years of learning to lie and cheat your way to a better life. Plus, he needed to be on his guard in case Lewis ever broke out of prison. Their old man had done it before and Len didn’t doubt that he’d find some way to do it again.

Lisa’s safety mattered more than anything. He couldn’t protect his baby sister if he was stuck behind a desk.

Reconnecting with Mick (of all the things he’d expected, Mick getting a job as a cop after all this time was _not_ one of them) and Lisa becoming as a CSI at the precinct were the final elements in convincing him to give up stealing. Well, _Lisa_ managed to convince him, thanks to her well-timed intervention days before she started her new job because “honestly, Lenny, I’d rather not worry about whether I’ll find my jerk brother in prison someday – or, worse yet, have to put you there.”

(Mick had merely grunted to show his agreement from the kitchen, far more interested in the muffins Lisa had made than the actual conversation, but the knowing gleam in his eyes spoke louder than words.)

Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten farther than attempting to cut ties with the crew he’d been looking into when those dreams went up in smoke. More like ozone and copper, to be exact. Apparently, deciding to wait for Lisa in her new lab minutes after the Particle Accelerator went off hadn’t been his smartest plan.

Waking up half-naked on a hospital bed in S.T.A.R. Labs and startling the hell out of the doctor on her tablet next to him were certainly not part of the plan.

Len jerked upright, ignoring the doctor’s squawk as he took in the wires and equipment hooked up to him. The contrast of the clear tubes sticking out of him and the faint scars marring his torso was jarring enough for him to blink away the haze settling in.

“You need to lie still, Mr. Snart!” The doctor’s fierce glare reminded him a little too much of his sister’s. He had a feeling they’d take to each other like ducks to water. “I need to check your pupils and I can’t do that if you’re - ”

“Where…” His voice came out hoarse and ragged. Len cleared his throat, immediately wincing at the dryness. “Where the hell am I?”

“S.T.A.R. Labs,” she said curtly, still trying to grip his chin so she could shine a light in his eyes. Len jerked back instinctively and her brow furrowed further. “I know this is all confusing, and I promise Hartley will explain everything once - ”

“Oh, hey!” Len spied a man with dark hair and a grin he could only describe as Chesire-cat-esque skidding to a halt in the doorway. Well, with that baby face he looked more like a kid than anything else. He spared a moment to take in the hideous clash of his navy tee and the orange and black baggy, plaid pants. Jeez, had this kid dressed himself in a dark room? “You’re awake! Shawna, you want me to get Hartley?”

“Yes, please.” The kid’s grin somehow stretched further across his face - which was a little creepy, not gonna lie - before bolting out of sight.

Len had no idea what was going on. Last time he checked, he’d been at the precinct, after all, waiting on -

His heart seized.

_Lisa._

_Fuck._

Len worked his way into a sitting position, gently tugging the wires and tubes out of him with a grimace. The doctor, Shawna, moved to pull them out of his grasp no matter how much Len swatted at her hands.

“Don’t touch those. I need you to hold still,” she snapped, her patience wearing thin fast.

“No offense, doc,” Len managed to push past her onto his feet only to wince at how the room swam before his eyes, “I appreciate the concern but I’ve got places to be.”

“Not right now you don’t.” Shawna grabbed his upper arm as he struggled to steady himself. Why the hell did he feel so woozy?

“Look - ”

“You can barely stand and I need to run some tests to make sure you’re alright. Wherever it is you think you need to be can wait.”

Len gritted his teeth and met Shawna’s scowl with one of his own. “I don’t know how I got here or who you think you are, but - ”

“Lenny?”

His head snapped toward the doorway once more, which wasn’t the best idea given how much it throbbed at the movement. Still, he couldn’t help but let his shoulders droop slightly in relief at the look of shock on his sister’s face. Strangely, even Shawna seemed to relax at the sight, her expression softening a smidge.

Judging by the footsteps hurrying down the hall, they weren’t going to be alone for much longer. The memory of the kid with terrible fashion sense and whoever this “Hartley” was didn’t bode well.

“Lise,” Len said, plastering a smile on his face, “will you _please_ tell her that I’m fine? All of this is hardly necessary.”

“I take it Hartley told you he was awake?” Shawna asked, as if Len had never spoken. He didn’t like the way her hands were twitching toward her flashlight and otoscope.

Lisa answered neither of them. Instead, she moved forward, slow and steady like Len was a wild animal ready to scatter at the first sign of danger, her eyes filling up with tears. Len didn’t like the way his insides churned at the look on her face.

“You’re really awake?”

Len could only nod in response to the near-inaudible question.

Which, of course, was when the teary expression vanished and was replaced by unbridled fury and a swift smack to his chest. He swore he heard Shawna snort under her breath as she stepped away.

“You jerk! Do you have any idea how worried we were? They said you weren’t going to wake up!”

“I’m fine,” Len quickly grabbed her arms as she tried to punch him again (or worse, throw one of her heels at his head). “Everything’s fine. I’m not ill, I didn’t break anything. I wasn’t out for long anyway. Good as new.”

Lisa froze. “What do you mean?”

Len gave her a funny look. “Well, I’m a little dizzy, but nothing else seems to be - ”

“No, I mean - ” Lisa frowned. “Lenny, you’ve been in a coma. Didn’t they tell you that?”

“I was getting to that,” Shawna said, though her words were muffled through the sudden rise of nausea in his gut. “But _someone_ wouldn’t sit still long enough to listen.”

“How long?”

“Nine months, about.”

His stomach dropped. “ _Nine months_?”

“Give or take,” another voice came from the doorway. Mick seemed more amused than anything as he crossed the room with the kid from before trailing behind him, giving Len a hard clap to the back. What with how Lisa was gripping his hands, Len didn’t think anything close to a hug would’ve been an option - not that Mick would’ve gone for it anyway. “Three of them spent in a shitty hospital before they took ya here.”

Len shut his eyes and swallowed down the bile creeping up the back of his throat. He must have looked a little green because he heard Shawna shooing his sister away so she could guide him back to the bed. He didn’t bother fighting this time.

It took a few hours to explain everything – and for Len to recover from the lecture and a lighter punch Lisa insisted on doling out because “your dumb ass got struck by lightning, that’s why!” Turned out that Hartley Rathaway, in the middle of being disowned by his parents for his sexuality wound up being named as the proprietor of S.T.A.R. Labs in the aftermath of the Accelerator’s explosion. With Len’s erratic heartbeat and constant flatlining, he’d been ushered into the Labs after Hartley and his remaining employees (the ever-so-kind Shawna and garishly-dressed Axel whom apparently was an engineer) determined they could stabilize him better in their facility.

Hartley himself only appeared partway through the conversation with a furrow in his brow. From what he remembered of the Rathaway family, the kid had never seemed so...gloomy and snappish. Then again, Len supposed getting disowned and thrown into the fray with a failing company to run hadn’t done him any favors. He seemed nice enough, though, aside from his sardonic tone.

To be honest, Len didn’t particularly care about Harrison Wells going missing (“he just vanished after the explosion,” Shawna explained with a shrug, “which didn’t help when we nearly lost all our funding”) or why Hartley now owned the Labs. After all, he was awake and alive. He was lucky Lisa had arrived soon after the lightning had struck, what with all the chemicals he’d been exposed to and how he could have died.

That was all that mattered.

Or, it _should_ have been all that mattered.

“Your heart stopped in that hospital so many times, Lenny,” Lisa said, her lips pursed as she paced the room. With her relief overwhelming the irritation she had initially shown upon his awakening, it was easy to spot the bags under her eyes, the slight frizz clinging to her curls. “Before Hartley offered to stabilize you here, we didn’t think you’d live.”

Mick didn’t look as tired as his sister, but the tension in his shoulders seemed to be drooping the more Len moved about, as if it were finally sinking in that _yes_ , he was fine. “Doc thought you were legally dead for a while. Dunno if they ever even bothered changing it on your record.”

“Well, I’m fine now.” Len brushed aside the hand Shawna held to help him up and spread his hands to placate the worry in Lisa’s eyes. “Feels like it never even – ”

Then Axel – the cheerful bundle of energy whom Len was certain placed a tack on his chair for fun while Lisa tried to explain the situation, which put him on Len’s shit list - walked back into the room with coffee for the group and tripped, and the whole room slowed to the speed of molasses.

Electricity burning through Len’s veins as he righted the tray and the coffees before a drop could be spilled. It was only as he came to a halt that he realized what he’d done and why everyone had gone dead-quiet.

He was also vaguely aware of the fact that his socks smelled a little burnt.

Mick was the first to burst out laughing. “Guess you don’t need that caffeine boost.”

 

*

 

As it turned out, Len had woken up with speed that made Lisa’s eyes go cross-eyed the first time he tested how fast he could blur, and sparked interest in the S.T.A.R. Labs team’s faces the more they tried to test his abilities. A right freak of nature, really.

Metahumans, Shawna had corrected him with a roll of her eyes, weren’t anything new (yet another marvel Len had missed out on when he was taking his power nap). Though the team had never seen anything quite as remarkable as his super-speed, nor had the chance to study it. Most of the metas were criminals, which explained Mick and Lisa’s exhaustion, and it wasn’t like they’d been able to stop one for a chat about how their powers worked.

At least, until now.

In the end, they made a deal: Len would stick around for S.T.A.R. Labs to study his speed while Mick and Lisa went to work and tried to clear up the mess concerning his “death”. He didn’t mind the compromise, though he didn’t appreciate the idea of being babysat with nothing to do, but Lisa assured him they just needed to convince the doctors and allow Len to lay low from the police without him speeding around.

It took less than a day until he got bored and flashed out of the Cortex before Axel could prod him with another tool (or make him wear that helmet-and-bathing-suit contraption he’d spotted on a nearby table, no thank you).

Sheer luck must have dictated him running into the equally not-so-dead Clyde Mardon right as he went on his rampage through the streets of Central. Thankfully, Len’s newfound speed allowed him to arrive in time to stop a car crash Lisa nearly fell victim to before he pushed her out of the way. Len didn’t waste more than a few minutes, mostly ensuring Lisa wasn’t hurt and that the drivers were unconscious and not dead, before he sprinted back into S.T.A.R. Labs to find Axel gaping at his afterimage mid-conversation and frustration written all over Hartley and Shawna’s expressions.

This time it was Hartley who gave him a lecture, more than half of which he paid no mind to, about running off out of the blue while Shawna checked his vitals for the umpteenth time and threatened to get Mick to handcuff him to the bed if he didn’t stay put.

(“Mighty kinky, doc, but sadly, you’re not my type.”

She let Lisa slap him upside the head for that one. Mick and Axel did pitiful jobs at hiding their amusement.)

Something about Mardon’s reappearance in Central irked him, though, more so than his newfound speed. Maybe it was Lisa’s near-death experience or the grim look on Mick’s face when he listened to Len recount the incident.

Or, maybe it was the churning in his gut, something uncomfortable and queasy at the thought of them both having to track down people like Mardon with nothing to protect themselves.

Whatever it was, it caused him to bring up the subject with Hartley, somewhat hesitantly, who only studied Len for a minute in silence before he relented. Despite his grumbling, the kid looked more excited than Len’d seen in any of the brief interviews with the Rathaways he’d caught on TV, like a glimmer of inspiration had returned behind tired eyes. Len couldn’t say he was sorry for stirring genuine enthusiasm back into Hartley’s gait, nor for the way he withheld his usual sarcasm for a few minutes as he shouted for Axel to help him find something.

However, he _did_ take offense when the kid returned with a suit that looked suspiciously like it was made of leather.

(“Again, with the kinks?”

“It’s not – it’s made of tripolymer – ”

“I know a fetish when I see one, kid. Also, red’s not really my – ”

“ _Put on the damn suit, Snart_.”)

It took luring Mardon out to his old hideout and – unintentionally – using Mick as bait in order to take him down (he didn’t pretend to feel remorseful for letting Mick shoot the meta in the head when he nearly decapitated Mick with the barn roof) but by the time the ordeal had ended his blood was singing. No amount of lecturing from Hartley about messing up his suit could suppress the thrumming, restless energy in his bones. There was this urge he could only compare to the rush of adrenaline he got from a well-done heist, this sensation of sheer _power_. He felt younger than he had in decades.

It was…a little addicting.

He didn’t miss the worry in Lisa’s eyes when he flashed to her apartment, intent on dropping her off so she could get a good night’s sleep before work. He forced himself not to dash away, to stand there and watch the way her brow knit together ever-so-slowly as she stared back at him.

“You know you don’t have to do this, Lenny,” she said, her voice unusually hushed, like she was in church instead of her living room. “Save the world or whatever.”

“Who said anything about saving the world?”

“I _know_ you,” she reminded him. “You’re too ambitious for your own good. Don’t pretend like saving Mick from Mardon didn’t give you a hard-on.”

Len rolled his eyes. “Lisa – ”

“I’m just saying,” she held up her hand, lips pursed as she scanned his face, “that I know you. This isn’t a one-and-done thing, is it?”

That tingling in his veins, urging him to zip out of there, run a couple laps around Central City for the hell of it, rose unbidden. Len didn’t budge but he could practically hear the crackling from the electricity living inside him, waiting for the next chance to burst free.

Lisa nodded as if she’d received her answer. She likely hadn’t needed confirmation in the first place. “Then promise me you’ll be safe. Being a vigilante is different from being a thief.”

“Aside from needing to hide my face, outrunning the law and taking down any competition?”

“It’s different,” Lisa insisted. “And I’m not going to pretend I agree with it, but you and I both know there’s no easy way to talk you out of doing anything you want to do. I’m already debating talking _Mick_ down from ‘knocking some sense into you’. His words, not mine."

Len raised an eyebrow, his lips curling at the corners. “He’s been riding my ass about going straight for years. What’s his problem with it?”

“None right now, but the last few months have marked the first time you’ve been on speaking terms since the same problem _you_ had when he – actually, when _we_ joined the CCPD. ”

Ah. Right.

He supposed that made them all hypocrites, what with his past insistence on sticking to his guns as a criminal and Mick and Lisa’s encouragement to live a normal life. Or, as normal as they could’ve gotten with a CSI, a cop and an unemployed ex-con.

He almost wanted to laugh. There was no way in hell things would ever be “normal” again. The Particle Accelerator and Harrison Wells had made sure of that.

Part of Len was tempted to poke fun anyway, but when he met Lisa’s steely gaze, he recognized the flicker of anxiety hiding behind those dark irises. He couldn’t help but correlate them to a familiar toddler’s wide-eyed stare in the shelter of his arms as their father lumbered by the bedroom door.

“It’ll be fine,” he assured his sister. “Mick won’t lose his cool over this once I talk to him.”

“…Does that mean you’ll actually talk to him or you’ll have _me_ talk to him?”

Len shot her a dirty look but Lisa was never one to cower; if anything, her own gaze sharpened.

“It _means_ I’m going to talk to Mick. Tomorrow.”

“Good.” Lisa watched him for a moment longer before turning away. The tension in her shoulders loosened and Len couldn’t help but trace the dark bags she’d attempted to cover with make-up now beginning to peek through after an eventful day. The last time he’d seen her this tired was when she had come home from college before exams her freshman year looking like she’d gotten caught in a fight with a bear, a wild ferocity lurking behind her eyes as she fought his and her mother’s efforts to get her to take a nap. Len still had the fading cuts on his forearm where her freakishly long nails had caught his skin in her struggle. He’d laughed it off later when Lisa was more awake and rested to be embarrassed about the incident.

They both knew he bore plenty worse scars protecting her before Lewis went off to prison.

Len made a mental note to check his body later for marks from the lightning strike – those Lichtenberg flowers or whatever they were called. Might have another scar to add to his collection.

“Just…” Lisa shut her eyes. “Just be careful. You’ve only been awake for a little over twenty-four hours and you’re about to throw yourself into becoming Central City’s resident vigilante. Agreeing to be a lab rat for a short while and agreeing to be a superhero for god-knows-how-long aren’t the same. This could turn out badly and you know it.”

“When has that ever stopped me?”

Lisa dropped her bag onto the couch with a shake of her head, but Len could spy the smile creeping onto her face even as she walked away. The spring in her step seemed to be returning, her usual tease fluttering around her words like ribbons in a summer breeze. “Well, if you’re so sure, then I suppose we’ll be spending more time with our friends at S.T.A.R. Labs.”

“I’m sure Dr. Baez will be pleased to hear that.”

She flipped him the bird but with her curls pulled back into a ponytail, there was nothing to hide the flash of pink crawling down her ears. Len took mercy on her and sprinted for his own apartment in lieu of vexing his sister further, but not before leaving a note on her fridge door reading _Call Baez :)_.

(Lisa glared at him when he picked her up from her place the next morning but he deemed the endeavor worth his time for the way her smile grew at the sight of the doctor in the lab with a list of tests at the ready.)

They met with Mick on his coffee break to break the news of Len’s decision. He wasn’t sure whether to feel offended or relieved at the way Mick burst out laughing, cutting him off mid-sentence to claim he figured Len’d say something “that stupid”.

Mick’s declaration, to which Lisa agreed with her own, of helping Len where he could, however, was something Len knew was going to cause another bout of arguing. Thankfully, Axel calling him from S.T.A.R. Labs to happily point out a robbery three blocks over put an end to the rising fight, though he caught the twin glares boring into the back of his head as he flashed back to the Labs to get his (still garishly red) suit.

He was definitely going to have a talk with Hartley about changing the suit’s color. Really, blue was more his thing.

Hartley just snorted and gestured toward the lightning-shaped comms he’d fashioned on either side of the mask. “Blue and yellow doesn’t go together.”

“Sometimes they do,” Axel piped up unhelpfully, still fiddling with the chest piece. Len couldn’t say he was too surprised given the other’s… _interesting_ fashion choices.

“Then make them white instead of yellow.”

Hartley’s expression scrunched up as if Len had insulted his grandmother to his face. “After we _already_ made them? That’s time and energy we don’t need to spend on something little like a _comm_.”

That…did sound a little dickish now that he said it out loud. “The suit at least – ”

“We’re not changing the suit,” Hartley stated firmly, his eyes narrowing. “You want blue? Go buy a morph suit. I’m sure it’ll protect you just as well as mine.”

Axel looked up. “That’s an option?”

Shawna groaned across the room and Len suppressed the desire to join in, folding his arms over his chest as Hartley pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers with a long-suffering sigh.

He entertained going back to thieving for a moment, dashing out the door and robbing Central City’s banks in the blink of an eye and depositing them in his, Lisa’s, and Mick’s names. Leaving the city, making a new name for himself.

Then the memory of the car accident floated to the forefront of his mind, of Lisa’s frozen dawning horror before he tackled her to the grass, of Mick facing down Clyde Mardon with only his gun against a tornado, and his insides lit up in violent fury.

Len’s blunt nails bit into his arms as he tuned out Hartley and Axel’s argument. Shawna glanced at him and twirled her finger around her temple before gesturing to her colleagues, a faint smile twitching on her face.

Well.

He’d made his bed. He might as well lie in it.

He nodded at Shawna and her smile brightened before she turned back to her notes.

After all, no matter what his sister claimed, playing vigilante, having no real rules to live by but his own – and his _team’s_ , he thought reluctantly – was truly no different from having a crew of criminals at his disposal.

How bad could playing hero be?  


**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on my DCTV Tumblr @areyouscarletcold. Comments are always appreciated, and have a great day!


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